This startup’s plant-inspired tech keeps hundreds of millions of plastic particles out of the ocean

By adding new filters at water treatment plants, PolyGone is removing microplastics from the water system—and then recycling them.

Tiny fragments of microplastics—from clothes, car tires, packaging, and other sources—slip through most water filters. But at a water treatment plant on the coast in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where plastic-filled wastewater would normally flow into the ocean, new technology has captured hundreds of millions of microplastic particles over the past year.